A Necromundan Enterprise
by Extartius
Summary: The door exploded inward in a shower of splinters and spent plasma. Following the door, Escabar Corgan sauntered in like a threat. Zane’s survival instincts had fled, now, leaving pure terror in its place!
1. Prelude

_I wrote this prologue as a kind of teaser before hashing the rest of the story together. It's turning out to be more of a slog than I expected and now that I've cut and pasted it around a bit, I'm not sure whether what follows fits with the rest of the story. Anyone who's read Better the Daemon You Know will be familiar with the main character, and this is the story of how he ended up on the ice world of Orrax after running away from the sororitas convent in Hive Primus, Necromunda. But be warned, the timeline is not strictly linear and this may lead to confusion, I've tried to keep things as clear as possible by heading the sections up in relation to the events of the final chapter. I hope to have this story finished in the next couple of months._

_I'd love to know what you think of it, so please review even if you hated it._

_Extartius. (November 13th, '06)_

* * *

**A Necromundan Enterprise - Prologue**

_Two hard-edged men sit in the back of a beaten up limousine, coasting through the sky-lanes of Hive City. Their destination, unbeknownst to the hapless chauffeur, is the nearest drop-shaft that will give them access to the seedy underbelly of the ancient and decaying culture of Necromunda – the Underhive._

_One man turns to the other and asks whether he will tell him what their purpose in going there might be. Why in the universe would they want to go there, of all places?_

_The second man turns to the first and seemingly misinterprets the question. But then again, perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps he just has a story to tell. A story that he has to impart to some other human being before he commits himself to a course of action that may change his life forever._

What's that you say?

You want to know what it was all about?

Well, that's a good question. One that I'm not sure can be answered without telling you the full story.

At first it was all about freedom, but I soon realised that freedom wasn't all it was cracked up to be. You see, when your liberty is taken away from you, so is your responsibility. Obligation is a far greater burden than any other. I had to learn that the hard way... by carrying it!

After that, when I was malingering at the bottom of the social pile, I came to believe that money might be the answer. That belief was quickly expunged. Money can't always buy you happiness, but it will always buy you grief.

I moved on to other belief systems. I put my faith in reputation – a man with a rep can always make enough money to live on and a lot of people who wouldn't have spit on you if you were on fire start to look up to you. But repute it a fickle thing and can soon turn into notoriety. Notoriety leads to resentment, that's when trouble comes back into the pattern. No one likes a man with airs and graces.

I dabbled with religion, but I'm not given to believing just anything that's shoved under my nose. Received Doctrine is a subtle poison of the mind.

Neither did revenge give me the sense of fulfilment I had thought it would. That long personal war had kept me fighting at times, kept me alive for certain – ironic as that may seem. But when it was done all I felt was that long, dark emptiness of the soul.

And so we come to the reason why I'm here in this civilised wasteland. The real reason for living, or at least I hope so. It's kind of a resurgence of something that happened to me a long time ago. Somewhere in the middle of all that philosophical guff I just spouted.

And that's where the story begins... kind of...

_The man sits back and his companion, a man who holds his friend in the greatest of esteem, decides not to enlighten him as to the true nature of his original question._

_He sits back and listens as Major Escabar Corgan, the Saviour of Five Rivers and Hero of Gunga IV, tells the story of his beginnings._


	2. Flashfire, Flashback

**The year is 572.M41. In the Settlement of Frag Hole Rock, deep in the lawless Underhive of Necromunda's capital city, events are rapidly coming to a head.**

**Three days of (relative) peace remain...**

* * *

He wanted to kill someone. He didn't much care who. 

Maxi was picking up on his stress. The great grey canid whined piteously as he sidled along on his master's heels.

A young Escabar Corgan stalked the streets. His streets. No frakker had ever been big enough or tough enough to take them from him. And no frakker ever would. He was the top dog, leader of the pack, alpha male. He ruled the streets of Frag Hole Rock by virtue of his reputation and by the ability to back that up with sudden, unstinting violence. He'd be damned if he was going to let a girl take the edge off that advantage.

She wasn't worth the energy, he told himself. But it felt like there was some kind of hole in his belly since the break up, like he was gut-shot or something, only it didn't hurt in quite the same way.

The streets were dark. It was the middle of the settlement's night-cycle. He and Maxi walked the beat alone, with only the night-vermin to bother them… and a group of caparisoned malcontents that haunted the shadows.

The first he knew of them was when a boom and a flash sent a shower of shot-lead his way.

Stupid! He thought. The shot was robbed of its punching power by too much range. The shower of still-warm ball bearings stung the skin but bounced harmlessly from his flak-jacket, leaving him otherwise unscathed as he dived for cover in the opposite direction. A round of familiar cursing followed the gunshot.

'You frakking idiot! What did I say about waiting till he was in range? Get the frak out of my sight, you useless dink-stain!'

Corgan recognised those nasal tones. His only hope was that the idiots had delivered their message before coming back for revenge. He decided he didn't care. They'd crossed a line and there was no going back.

He sidled into the shadows, slipping a slim-line pistol from his boot and screwing on the silencer attachment. Maxi whined from somewhere is the shadows to his right. Corgan followed the sound and found him hunkered behind a pile of rusted iron sheeting.

'C'mon, boy, let's go find out how many there are out there. I'll need your nose for this one.'

He tossed the mutt a sliver of dried rat-meat. The dog snatched it up and headed off, loping along on silent pads. Maxi led them through a series of narrow by-ways. Corgan had to squeeze between sagging walls and through chain-link fences, clamber over pipe-stacks and through calf-deep pools of stagnant, oil-slicked water. But Maxi led him true. They came around into another walkway and stopped. The dog slunk back but Corgan continued on more carefully. Up ahead he could just make out the crouching form of a carapace-armoured Arbites.

When he was close enough he tapped the man on his shoulder. The Arbites whirled but before he could bring his bulky shotgun around Corgan put a silenced bullet through his visor. The man crumpled. Corgan worked quickly. He took a length of filament wire from a pouch and looped it through the pins of two grenades secured to the man's belt. He tied the ends off to a pipe on the wall and retreated back into the shadows.

The silenced pistol disappeared back into his boot and he took out a pair of twinned Velossi 7's, powerful pistols loaded with armour-piercing rounds. When Corgan was happy with the range and the amount of cover he was in, he cleared his throat and let rip a throaty bellow of pain.

'I'm hit, Bull! Help me out, Bull, please… I don't wanna die!'

He had no idea if it sounded convincing or not, but he reasoned it wouldn't take too much to dupe the great oaf. He sat back and waited.

It wasn't long before Bull's distinctive bulk came stomping over, closely followed by a smaller, much more cautious figure, still muttering imprecations at his lunk-headed companion over his earlier mistake.

'You okay, Pes?' asked the big man, addressing the prone figure of the man Corgan had slain.

'Keep it down, dink-head. That frakker won't be far away,' said Eddi, darting nervous glances in all directions, his combat shotgun up and ready. Even so, the two men were still way too overconfident, their bravery rooted in the heavy armour they wore. Corgan smiled and waited.

Bull crouched down over Pes' sprawled corpse, shoving at him and imploring him to wake up.

'Leave him, you idiot, he's dead!'

Bull let slip a mournful cry and swept Pes up in his arms. The shout disguised the pinging of grenade pins springing loose. Corgan counted to five. The explosion illuminated the night, tearing Bull and Pes into five discernible pieces and sending Eddi flying top over tail to land in a crumpled heap.

Still Corgan waited. Two more armoured figures came running, shouting in unintelligible horror at the carnage, sweeping the area with their large-bore shotguns. One of them ran over to Eddi, who'd been knocked unconscious by the concussive force of the blast, the other peered into the areas of deep shadow all around.

They called themselves Arbites. Typical bully boys with about as much street-nouse as a three week old kitten. It never ceased to amaze Corgan how these people survived to adulthood.

He took careful aim and let rip.

The man crouching over Eddi took three rounds, two to the midriff and another through the hip. The second was hit twice, one taking his legs out from under him, the second burrowing in through the top of his shoulder. The third shot careened overhead as he pitched onto his back.

Corgan moved fast. Both men were only wounded – even his punchiest bullets were slowed by all that armaplas resin and the range had been steeper than he thought. He closed the gap with the one he'd hit twice and put three more rounds through his helmet, shattering the helm and spraying brains all over. The other man was trying to sit up and take aim with his shotgun when Corgan finished him too.

Standing over the prone form of the one called Eddi, the "brains" of the outfit, Corgan considered the implications of his actions.

He'd just killed four Adeptus Arbites and broken a fifth into small but still basically connected pieces. This was going to have consequences. The thought didn't stop him executing Eddi with as little mercy as he'd dispatched the others.

* * *

**Two Years Earlier...**

The Greasy Spoon was your typical Underhive dive, so different from the sterile environment he'd been brought up in. The kind of place he loved by virtue of the fact that it was so far removed from his beginnings uphive. The floors were packed earth, tracked in over the original grille-work floor until the cavity beneath had become more an archaeologist's dream than a maintenance crawl-space. The walls were a nondescript brown colour, grubby and pitted from years of misuse and abuse, gunfights, bar-brawls and gang-raids. There was a long, L-shaped bar that started in the main common room and the front of the building and curved around into the back where partitioned booths offered a modicum of privacy. The floor was laid out with rickety, much-repaired tables and chairs where the regulars congregated to swap stories and jaw with each other.

When Corgan had walked in from the badlands this was the first place where they made him feel welcome. Frag Hole Rock had been a tough joint in those days. Prosperity tended to breed a lot of competition in the Underhive, but that wasn't true of Frag Hole. The Guild Enforcers had the whole place locked down tight. The Arbites had helped them to re-establish the settlement after an outbreak of a particularly virulent neurophagic virus – the so-called zombie plague. As a result the local gangs hadn't had a look in and once the Enforcers had got themselves established they made sure there was no room for competition.

The Greasy Spoon was where the old-timers hung out. The Enforcers didn't give them any trouble on account of how they were all dirt poor and pretty toothless. They welcomed Corgan like a prodigal son, a link to the world at large of which they no longer felt a part. He was young and full of energy and it reminded them of their youth. There was nothing they liked better than telling stories about the old days, and a fresh pair of ears was always welcome. They regaled him with heroic tales of when the Low Domes were won!

They didn't ask him about his past. The subject was taboo. So he didn't have to tell them he'd runaway from a powerful gang up in Tower Head a couple of weeks before. Nor did he have to tell them that he'd been raised by Sororitas nuns up in hive city orphanage before running away from there too. He'd been running all his life, it seemed. He finally found somewhere that didn't make his feet itch.

He was sitting talking to an old prospector called Grady. The old-timer was a gold-mine of advice and hive-lore. Corgan had already learned a lot from him in the short time that he'd known him. Grady was drinking some foul spirits that tasted like battery acid while Corgan fell back on the somewhat more mellow flavour of One Eyed Petra's home brewed fungus beer.

He would have been the first to admit, however, that his attention wasn't entirely focused on what Grady was jawing about. Which brings us to the other reason that Corgan favoured the Greasy Spoon.

Little Luci Low-Brow.

That had been her gang name, back in the day. Throne knows how she picked it up but it certainly wasn't a reference to the way she looked. Okay, so she wasn't exactly a goddess, but she was a good wholesome, healthy girl which is saying a lot in the Underhive. Her most distinguishing feature was the gang tatt that wound from her left wrist all the way up and around her arm to frame her cheek.

She and Corgan had made a connection from day one. They had this thing going on where they could communicate whole sentences with nothing but meaningful looks and expressions. Some of these were so subtle they could conduct whole conversations without anyone noticing. It was a talent that came in handy at times.

So the scene is set. Grady was chattering away and Corgan was watching Luci serve drinks. She had a lithe, strutting grace that made her a joy to watch, a legacy from the days when she'd run with a gang. Dusty Piet was propping up the bar with Joss Whails and Croupier Croop who worked nights at the Gambling Den down the street. One Eyed Petra stood stoically behind the bar, rubbing at a grubby tankard with an even grubbier towel.

In short, things couldn't have been more ordinary.

Then the door exploded inward in a shower of splinters and in looms Helmut Wulfenska, one of the most notorious independents in the Low Domes area.

'Wulfenska looking for Egg Hanson,' he rumbled. 'You tell Wulfenska where he is. Hold out on Wulfenska, Wulfenska will break your face. Lie to Wulfenska, Wulfenska come back later and break your face.'

Helmut Wulfenska had made his name as a bounty hunter… breaking faces. He had the typical Goliath physiology and had inherited their deliberate way of speaking. But Helmut Wulfenska wasn't as stupid as he sounded. He had at least the low cunning of a canid, which was much more intelligence than you would have given him credit for from the way he spoke.

No one looked like answering so Corgan shrugged to himself and stood up to do it for them. He couldn't really blame them for being intimidated. Wulfenska was a big man with a big rep. But, as Corgan would to find out over the next couple of years, the bigger the rep, the farther there was to fall. Corgan was nobody, but he wasn't afraid of Wulfenska either. That gave him a significant advantage.

'Egg Hanson, eh? Sounds like a made-up name to me. We've certainly never heard of the fella. You sure you haven't been sent on a wild goose chase, pal?'

It usually took a while for Helmut to process so many words spoken in so little time, Corgan gave him a minute. Luci shot him warning look that said; 'You're in it up to your neck!' He replied with a shrug that intimated; 'I can handle this, trust me!'

'Who would dare mock Wulfenska? Wulfenska would break face…'

'Course you would, mate, course you would. All I'm saying is we never heard of no Egg Hanson. He ain't never been here and that's a fact!'

Luci moved behind the bar and prodded Petra in the back, a clear gesture that said; 'Get your cudgel out, there's gonna be trouble…'

He couldn't help it… it made him smile.

Fortunately it took Wulfenska a few minutes to sort through the double negatives, but in the end he proved himself the equal of his reputation and just assumed Corgan was lying. Not only that, but he was mocking him, which warranted a broken face.

He gathered himself up – all twenty stone of iron hard muscle and sinew – lowered his boulder of a head and charged.

Ducking aside and under his reaching arms Corgan spun behind him and delivered a swift kick to his prodigiously muscled rump. His headlong momentum – suddenly bereft of breaks – added to the small amount of force Corgan was able to bring to bear was enough to send him crashing face-first into the wall of the bar.

It was quite a hefty impact and one that left him stunned. During this time Corgan relieved him of the heavy navy revolver in his hip-holster and the heavy blade opposite. The blade he tossed to Luci, who hid it behind the bar.

The old-timers were a little braver now that they'd seen what the mighty Wulfenska was truly capable of. Grady stood beside Corgan and Petra too. Dusty Piet had already made himself scarce but Joss and Croop stood fingering their knives and grinning at each other. Even Luci had picked up Petra's second-favourite bar of lead and joined the party.

Wulfenska came back to his senses, shaking his head like a dog. When he saw the number of people facing up to him, blocking the only exit and hefting pistols, cudgels and knives, he became a little more reasonable.

'You sure you never heard of Egg Hanson?'

'What's the bounty on this fella?' Corgan asked. Helmut had conveniently forgotten about the butt-kicking episode, which was somewhat of a relief to the youth. Maybe he hadn't felt it, but Corgan wasn't going to mention it just in case.

'Two hundred credits.'

'Blimey! What did he do?'

'Wulfenska not care, Wulfenska just want get paid.'

'Tell you what. For a small fee, I'll help you find this Egg Hanson. What do you say?'

'Helmut Wulfenska work alone…'

'Yeah but it doesn't seem to be working out very well does it. You're being bullied by a kid and some old timers…'

'Wulfenska have big reputation…'

'Yeah, I've heard of you. Don't worry about that. The question you've got to ask yourself is why I'm not scared of you.'

Wulfenska wrinkled his brow in thought. Corgan decided to help him along.

'Because when you work alone it doesn't always pay to play on your rep, my friend. If you go around blasting doors off their hinges you're gonna start pissing poor innocent people off. You need to exercise some subtlety, mate.'

'Wulfenska not know subtlety… Wulfenska not like subtlety!'

'I Thought as much, and that's why you need a partner. I know all there is to know about subtlety. Tell you what, for a twenty five percent cut of the bounty I'll demonstrate. You can teach me your intimidation techniques and I'll teach you about subtlety. How's that sound?'

'Wulfenska not sure…'

'Also, as an added bonus, whenever you do get yourself into a predicament, like this one for example, you'll have some backup. You can't go wrong with me, Helmut, old feller.'

'I give you trial period.'

Corgan gave him one of his most winning smiles and, without hint of perturbation flipped the revolver and offered it back to him.

'You keep pea-shooter, little man, Wulfenska prefer this…'

He reached back and pulled a massive autocannon from the sling on his back. Corgan froze as the blood drained from his face and everyone else scattered for cover. It occurred to him that he may just have made his last mistake. Wulfenska laughed.

'Good thing I have sense of humour, little man. Come, let us learn subtlety.'

The old timers returned to their gassing as Wulfenska stomped out. Corgan turned to Petra.

'I'll pay for the door out of my cut.'

Luci took two steps towards him and planted a kiss full on his lips. When she pulled away she had a sultry "Don't be a stranger" expression on her face.

That day marked the beginning of two very important acquaintances in Corgan's career. One saw him starting upon his inexorable rise to infamy. The other had much longer-term implications.

* * *

**Two years later, with three days to go...**

Guildsman Rake had once been the foremost Housecarle of the Sott Franchise… once being only a few days ago. He had commanded Obel Sott's own bodyguard before being cast out in disgrace. Ordinarily he was a well paid and highly valued commodity, but ever since the House had been driven out of one of their most lucrative Underhive holdings, Rake had been on the receiving end of Old Man Sott's temper. He had refused to pay Rake until such time as he restored Frag Hole Rock to its rightful owners. Rake was a professional. He knew the nature of the world he lived in and so he didn't let this anger him. Instead he directed all his energies into achieving that goal.

He had used his own personal savings, a considerable sum, to hire a personal army of hard-knocks from every corner of the Low-Domes region. Many of these men had suffered losses. The fact that they put these down to the machinations of the same man was a trump card in Rake's favour. The aggrieved banding together to take revenge on the aggressor. It was fitting.

But this would not be enough. Rake knew that he had to secure the good-will and co-operation of other local gangs if he was to not only flush out his opponent, but crush him utterly. It was potentially another very expensive necessity, perhaps, but Rake had another ace up his sleeve and that was why he out here, in the deserted borderlands between Frag Hole Rock and Tower Head.

The machine-barn that he and his cronies had occupied for the meeting had long ago been stripped of anything remotely resembling machinery, a valuable sales commodity to the neighbouring residents. As a result it was little more than an echoing shell. Some of the catwalks had retained their structural integrity. From here some of Rake's men would retain the advantage of elevation, while he and three others stood exposed at ground level.

In the surrounding structures, most of which had long since collapsed and corroded into twisted metal skeletons, a further seven men stood sentry, watching for the arrival of the Punishers. Rake paced the floor, mulling over and over the carefully scripted offer he was about to make.

Jendo hurried into the barn.

'They're here, Markus is escorting them in.'

'How many?'

'Just three. No scouts or bodyguards. It's just Jamma, Wolfe and Bevier!.'

Rake shook his head at the sheer arrogance of these men. At the same moment he realised he was intimidated. He realised at the same time that this was exactly what Jamma had intended. Three Catachans walking into a ring of fifteen heavily armed Necromundan hive-trash. The odds were still well in Jamma's favour.

'Take up your position, Jendo, and try not to wet your pants when they arrive.'

The man slid to one side like a mutt that had been soundly kicked. Rake had begun to doubt his decision to bring his nephew along on this venture. He wasn't as street-wise as he liked to make out and it was embarrassing.

Rake brushed these distractions aside as he waited, entering a meditative state in final preparation for the confrontation. He needed to be in absolute control for the next few minutes.

The trio entered. At a glance and seen alongside the native stock they would have been taken for very tall Goliaths. They were heavily built and muscular. But in actual fact they bore more resemblance to scaled-up Orlocks with their square jaws and close-cropped hair. They had also adopted the Orlock fashion-sense, with their sleeveless jackets of leather and denim, adorned with haphazard accoutrements in ruddy steel.

Jamma was dark-skinned and slightly portly, with a thick, acrid cigar clamped between yellow-stained teeth. He wore a pair of silver-rimmed shades even in the murky innards of the barn. Wolfe was the shortest of the three but still huge, with the typical glowering, calculating countenance of a hard-knock bodyguard. Bevier was a heavily scarred, twitching mass of muscle. He'd suffered some grievous head-wound in his early days in the Underhive. As a result he had what most people would very tactfully call an unstable temperament. Rake had heard the stories. Bevier was a frakking loon!

They approached until they stood uncomfortably close, uncomfortable because of their obvious height and weight advantages. They loomed.

'You Rake?' asked Jamma in his heavily accented cant.

'That's me. You must be the infamous Punishers. I'm glad you took the time to come.'

'Get to the point, babalon. Catachans no like to beat roun' de bush. Never know wha kind o trouble you gon scare up…' Jamma grinned. It was an unnerving experience.

'Very well. You heard of Helmut Wolfenska?'

'I heard o' him.'

'Did you know he'd taken over at Frag Hole Rock?

Jamma nodded.

'You hear he was dead?'

'Sure did, too.'

Rake hesitated. It stood to reason the Catachans had a pretty good network of spies in the locality. He wondered if they knew about Wolfenska's erstwhile partner already.

'He was done in by one of your runaways, as I hear it.'

'Yeah, so you say in your message. So what is dis all about, babalon?'

'You want him back?'

'If we wanted dat little runt back, wha's to stop us?'

'You haven't tried already?'

Jamma stepped closer, Rake had to make a conscious effort not to back off. He could no longer look the man in the eyes without craning his head back.

'What business of yours is dat?'

'We've tried ourselves. Wolfenska was plan A and he failed. Plan B was a bit more subtle, but your little runaway is a scary individual. He's seen off every thug, hood and hard-knock we've sent into Frag Hole. Single-handedly. We reason it might be time for plan C.'

'Plan C involves us?'

'In a way. We'd like to encourage a spirit of co-operation, so that there are no misunderstandings in the days to come. We're offering you the kid as payment for your good will when we re-take the Rock.'

'When you have de Rock and we have de kid, all bets are off. Until den you have my co-operation. Just send your boy Jendo whenever you need any assistance, I'll make sure you get wha's comin to you, babalon.'

'It's a deal!' Rake turned his head to the left and spat to seal the deal. Jamma followed suit, turned and marched off with his boys in tow.

When Rake could breathe again he sighed with relief.

'That was cheaper than I reckoned,' he said, to no one in particular. But that was just as well. It left more money in the pot for the hefty bribes he was planning. Corgan was going down.


	3. Retribution, Retaliation

**In the Garter Club Bordello, Frag Hole Rock, seven days to go...**

There was a fly somewhere, buzzing away at the edges of his unconsciousness. He tried to ignore it, but some instinct forced him to semi-wakefulness, no matter how hard he tried to get back to the fuzzy netherworlds of dream-land. The sops were still doing enough to numb his cravings – sleep remained his primary motive. But this instinct gnawed at his guts and he knew what that meant through long experience.

Survival was pulling into the mag-lev station and if he didn't get up he would miss the train.

The buzzing got fractionally louder and more frenetic and he heard a clumping sound that had never been made by a fly. Consciousness slipped a little closer.

'Frak it!' he slurred, hoisting his limp bulk upright on trembling arms. 'Where are my stims?'

The light hurt his eyes, he reached for his shades. His throat felt swollen and his tongue furred. The numerous bottles of 'snake appeared to have been discharged without exception. Typical of his fortunes.

At least he could get a shot before the cravings reduced him to a gibbering wreck. But no, the stims were gone… He knew he'd had a full shiv left last night. He was too acclimatised to his nigh on permanent state of "high" to have lost track. Like any hardened addict, he always kept account of how much he had left, else he wouldn't have been sleeping here last night, he'd have been out replenishing his personal stock.

Something was wrong.

The buzzing got louder and he realised it wasn't a buzzing at all, he was hearing voices, muffled by the closed door. He strained his ears to catch what they were saying.

'You'll ruin my reputation.'

'You never thanked me for it in the first place so lump it,'

'C'mon, you know how things work down here…'

'Hence the reason I'm here,'

'You can't just barge in and roast my clients like this…'

'So why did you lift his sparkle, Jewel? You could have left it close to hand so he'd have a chance of putting up some resistance. Just stand aside.'

The door exploded inward in a shower of splinters and spent plasma that set the threadbare carpet to smouldering. Following the door, Escabar Corgan sauntered in like a threat. Zane Orlock's stomach felt like it had started digesting him from within. That survival instinct had fled, leaving pure terror in its place.

'Aw, shit!'

xxx

'Corgan, man, I was just on my way to track you down, rube. What's with all the pyrotechnics? That's some freaky shit, man!'

Zane was sump scum. Three weeks ago he'd come begging for a piece of Corgan's pie. He'd given him a job dealing in the Sumps Reach settlement, a territory he was steadily moving in on, but so far hadn't seen a return on his investment. In fact, he hadn't seen Zane since he'd sent that sack of nerf-shit down there. And now here he was, selling his crud on Corgan's home turf and snagging freebies from the girls at the same time. There wasn't any lying down for that, not from a jumped up little junkie like Zane, even if his did claim to have "family".

'I don't appreciate having to put up with junkies like you taking liberties on my patch, Zane.'

'He's fully paid up,' Jewel protested, inserting her scantily clad form between Corgan and the bed Zane hadn't yet been able to get up from.

'So where's my cut, Jewel?'

She looked up at him with all the petulance she could muster.

'You pay me to keep you unmolested and this is exactly the kind of trash I try to dissuade from coming here. So, unless you've changed your mind about keeping me on the payroll, I suggest you let me do my job…'

Petulance turned to a furtive nervousness. In the year since Corgan had gone solo, taking on sole responsibility for Frag hole he'd run off every heavy-handed pimp in the settlement, promising Jewel and her girls that he'd keep them safe. The last six months had been easy street for them compared to before and all for a relatively small percentage. The girls at the Garter Club were considered high-class these days, which meant they did more than just survive. They made a profit and were allowed to keep some of it to improve their personal circumstances.

The price was well worth the service Corgan provided. He'd proven himself up to the task of dissuading the neighbours from too much green-eyed jealousy. Whenever the girls got hassled, on the streets or in the club itself, it was Corgan that rained dire retribution on the culprits. One-eyed Cali had been beaten up pretty badly last month, so badly that she couldn't work. Corgan had stumped up the cash to keep her fed. She'd healed well and now she was back on the game, brimming with her former confidence while the frakker that bruised her was lying in a sump with holes in him.

Hell, Corgan had even promised them a pension, an unknown concept to any regular Underhiver, most of whom didn't expect to live to retire. The Garter Girls had the promise of being looked after for whatever old age they could expect to have… as long as they kept their benefactor around.

Corgan was pretty sure Jewel would have settled down for him, if he'd been the settling type! Her features softened.

'Just try not to raise too much of a commotion.'

'I'll send Jimny to fix the door.'

'And a new carpet?'

'Whatever.'

Zane writhed, trying to get his feet under him but unable to co-ordinate his limbs.

'Aw, frakkin-A, rube. I was jus' about t'come see you, man…' he whimpered, bloodshot eyes following Jewel as she left the room. Corgan noted that she'd kept the packet of stims she'd light-fingered from him, although he couldn't imagine where she'd secreted it in that costume.

'Time to pay the ferryman, Zane!' The shaven-headed youth closed in on the quaking mass of human detritus and dragged Zane off the bed, dumping him on the floor. The man struggled to his feet on wobbly legs.

'Come on man, I need a fix…'

'That's too bad for you,' Corgan gave him a shove that sent him rolling through the door. 'In your shoes I'd never have touched the stuff. It shows a lack of good judgement.' Zane staggered down the stairs ahead of Corgan, gripping the rails with white knuckles. He was shaking almost uncontrollably now.

The street outside was brightly lit, the power supply being plentiful and reliable compared to some areas in the low-domes region. Frag Hole Rock was a prosperous settlement these days. It had always had a fairly stable infrastructure due to strong Guilder interests in the area. Corgan had taken full advantage of this when he moved in.

The Garter club itself occupied the bottom three floors of a well-maintained building. The upper floors belonged to a small-time property mogul who had his own security, but who also recognised the expedience of keeping Corgan well paid in order to protect his protection. He couldn't work out why the man couldn't just sack his current security and Corgan direct, but as long as he got paid that didn't matter much.

He escorted Zane to a darker part of the settlement, a narrow alleyway choked with rubble and detritus. Rats scuttled in the shadows and somewhere there was the slow echo of moisture dripping from high overhead. Zane's trembling could have been withdrawal from his demanding addiction, but there must have been fear in there too.

'Where's my money, Zane? You get one chance to answer before I blow your brains out your ear.'

'That's what I was comin' to see you 'bout, man…'

'Don't tell me you lost it.'

'Shit man, it's a frakkin' graveyard out there…'

'It's gonna be a graveyard in here too, if you don't tell me who's got my money.'

Zane sobbed, dropping to his knees in the side-street.

'Please don't kill me, man…'

Corgan was getting sick of the guy's attitude. He pulled the navy service revolver Wulfenska had given him and put it to Zane's temple.

'Tell me and I might go easier on you.'

'It was that bald freak Lomax, man. He took my gear, your money… Told me to pass on a message to you.'

'What message?'

'He says he ain't scared of you, man, says he's gonna take you down piece by piece.'

'You gave him my money.'

'C'mon man, he had his goons with him.'

'I don't give a shit, rube. You think I sweated blood taking down the Guild only to take flak from some small-time hick from the arse-end of beyond?'

'Naw, man, it ain't like that!'

'The hell it is. I own Frag Hole. You all own shit! I don't even know why I'm bothering to explain this to you…'

He cocked the pistol, causing the distraught man to flinch and whimper.

'How do you want it?'

Zane sobbed with uncontrollable terror as Corgan offered him his infamous Final Choice. Some men occasionally had the wits to respond, but usually those words were merely the precursor to them shitting in their pants. Zane fell into the latter category.

'Okay, back of the head, quick and painless,' said Corgan. For more than any other reason, it was his trademark execution. When Zane's body was found, either later that day or maybe tomorrow, they'd know he had crossed the line and they'd know that Corgan had come to collect.

No one in Frag Hole crossed Corgan unless they were stupid or trying to make a name for themselves, which in Corgan's book classed in the same league. He hadn't monopolised the Rock's industries, in fact he'd taken down the Enforcers because they were doing just that. But everyone else that operated in the settlement knew that they did so because Corgan allowed it to happen. They paid him well to retain that privilege.

His protection business made him a small fortune, but as far as Corgan was concerned it was the respect, or perhaps the fear, that was worth its weight in gold.

Taking up position behind the quaking man he put the revolver to the back of his head. With a flash of light, the bark of a heavy calibre gun and the kick of its good solid recoil, Zane Orlock's addiction was well and truly kicked.

* * *

**At the Greasy Spoon Drinking Hole, six days to go...**

The drinking hole was as seedy as ever. The clientele, with only a few new faces amongst them, was as filthy as the tabletops and only marginally cleaner than the floor. Old Petra stood behind the bar, perpetually wiping a filthy tankard with a grimy rag, watching his customers with a suspicious eye. The ceiling was still a patchwork tapestry of naked cable sheaves and ventilation ducting and the alcoves were as dark and welcoming as ever they had been.

Dusty Piet occupied his accustomed bar-stool with his boy, Sammy Slap, attending to his every word. He was supposed to be learning at the old-timer's feet but no one could work out what he hoped to learn by doing so. Piet was a renowned and spectacular failure.

Corgan took up his own seat at the end of the long counter, deep inside the Greasy Spoon's warm, murky interior. Lucile served him his usual and leant over towards him, augmenting her generous cleavage with her arms folded in front of her.

'How's things, sugar-cheeks?'

'Been better,' Corgan replied, favouring her with a smile. Of all the women in his life he thought Luci might have been his favourite. They'd always had that certain rapport, the ability to communicate in meaningful looks. Being the man he was he found this to be an alluring trait. He was never the vociferous type, though he could turn a phrase when he wanted to.

'Aw, hon!' she cooed, adopting a sympathetic air. 'I heard about Zane.'

'There'll be trouble on that score. He might have been sump-scum but he had family…'

Luci winked at me: _Nothing you can't handle, babe!_

'What's on the vine?' he asked.

'Couple o' guys came through yesterday talking about a knuckle-down throughout the area. Guilders are gearing up for a revival and word has it they'll be supported by the Arbites.'

'Ha!' Corgan barked. 'Law and Order for the Underhive… That'll be the frakking day! They better not bite off more than they can chew is all I can say.'

'I also heard that Lomax and his crew have been scouting the Freeslopes out hubwards.'

'I have business with Lomax! I'll check it out.'

'Ask Little Jimny, apparently they roughed him up a bit.'

'I was meaning to find the kid anyway. I busted up one of Jewel's doors this morning…'

A flash of jealousy crossed Luci's face at the mention of Jewel O'Scally. Corgan barely managed to suppress a smirk. It wasn't like Luci had anything to worry about but sometimes he let her think she did. She turned to Petra with a solicitous smile.

'Can I take my break now, Petti?'

The old man nodded, oblivious. Luci turned that attentive gaze back on the youthful gunfighter.

'Care to join me upstairs?' she asked.

'Thought you'd never ask…' he replied.

* * *

**Out in the Freeslopes 'Hood, five days to go...**

Lomax had three of his buddies with him. They were holed up in the Crow's Foot drinking hole. Corgan noted the landlord's nervous tick as he entered and offered him a reassuring nod. Fendri didn't want this trouble on his doorstep. He would do what he could to take this business outside.

He approached the group of hard-nuts, limbering his primary pistols in their holsters.

'Well, well, well…' Lomax drawled, directing his pasty faced grin up at Corgan. 'If it isn't the new rube on the block… How's tricks, Corgy-boy?'

'Tricks are tricks, Lomax. Care to step outside and turn a few?'

Lomax grinned even wider.

'Not really, I prefer to wash my dirty laundry indoors…'

'You wash these rags?' Corgan replied. 'Could've fooled me…'

Lomax almost lost his cool. His heavies started to mutter amongst themselves. It was a pretty big deal when you insulted a gang's colours, they tended to get uppity about odd little things like that.

'I'll be outside,' Corgan turned and sauntered out. The street outside was typical of this part of town, littered with rusting engine parts and broken piping. Cables hung from overhead ducts that had long since been disused. Rats skittered in the darker places, haunted by furtive maul-cats gone feral.

He seated himself on the edge of a rain barrel. Occasionally the atmospherics in the low-domes region resulted in heavy rainfall. The water-stills in the area were unreliable so it paid to collect that moisture when you could, though it paid doubly if you purified it before drinking it. While he was waiting Corgan checked his weapons.

On his left hip hung the heavy navy revolver Wulfenska had given him. It had two six-round cylinder mags mounted on a clever little exchange-lever mechanism. With the touch of a button and the flick of his wrist he had an instant reload. Balancing this was his equally heavy, plasma pistol. He'd picked that up from his local gunsmith, a notable find in itself. Most plasma-induction weapons on the market would burn your hand off before even thinking of roasting your enemies but Cogan kept his in good shape to ensure a good temperament.

Inside his sleeveless jacket a shoulder harness cradled a pair of twinned Korsch 90's, compact, light-weight machine-pistols, each with a sixteen round capacity. They were his staple weapons when he knew he was going up against more than a couple of toughs. They had a high-rate of fire and a pretty good punch for the spec.

At the small of his back were the first of his regular backups in a cunningly designed double-holster. Two Velossi Sevens, compact and short-ranged but with a lot more punch than the Korsch due to the caseless, hollow-tipped rounds he loaded them with.

As if that wasn't enough (and it frequently wasn't in Corgan's line of work) he packed a slim-line pistol tucked in his left boot and a seven inch boey knife in the right. As his very last line of defence he always carried six little one-shots, disposable blasters, on a bandolier across his chest.

Corgan was a one man arsenal.

A one man arsenal that was getting bored.

The street was empty. It was almost as if the residents of this particular 'hood had some kind of sixth sense that told them to stay indoors.

The only sign of life was a rangy canid prowling the shadows, hunting giant rats. Like most feral creatures in the Underhive it looked on the verge of starvation. Its wary eyes moved furtively, assessing my threat level. After a moment it slunk closer.

Despite its malnutrition the canid was an impressive beast, with its shoulders almost as high as Corgan's waist. While it looked emaciated from a distance, up close you couldn't deny its strength. It was just that it was wiry rather than bulky, depending upon speed and cunning more than brute strength. Corgan took a strip of jerked meat from his picnic-pocket and tossed it into the street. The canid snatched it up and retreated to the gloomy recesses of a narrow alleyway to devour it.

The animal reminded Corgan of himself. It survived on its wits and latent, elemental abilities, and despite appearances it was quite successful. The canid reappeared. It sat in the mouth of the alley and regarded Corgan with cautious curiosity.

Lomax and his buddies finally deigned to accept Corgan's challenge some minutes later. They rolled out of the Crow's Foot laughing and shoving at each other. They laughed even louder when they noticed him waiting, wrongly construing it as a sign of weakness. They must have thought he was full of piss and wind. They'd soon learn otherwise.

'So you really wanna go, Corgy-boy?'

The youth stood up and rolled his shoulders back, limbering up in a casual, off-hand way. He didn't reply directly, but they caught his drift. Lomax painted a cruel sneer across his grubby face and made some kind of signal that sent his buddies out to either side of him.

They were about thirty paces away. Corgan took a slow step forward, arms hanging loose at his sides. The gang started closing the gap too. It was a game of nerve, now. Whoever lost it first would lose face no matter whether they survived or not. There were enough invisible observers to ensure that.

Corgan kept moving, his buckles clinking with those self-assured movements. Lomax's sneer deepened, his dark eyes glittering with menace.

'You must be the stupidest rube I ever saw!' he said.

Corgan just smiled.

After seven paces one of Lomax's men lost it and went for his pistol. The navy revolver was in Corgan's hand within the blink of an eye. A hollow booming rang out and a large-calibre bullet sent the man flying back, blood spurting from his chest.

A second attacker managed to get his hand to the butt of his pistol before taking a bullet through his right shoulder and a third was fried by a ball of coruscating plasma. The smell of burning flesh permeated the air. Lomax was suddenly the only one left in the fight.

He bolted, two short-pattern bolt pistols flaring out at Corgan, who was already moving to one side. The fusillade went wide. Lomax dived into a dead-end alley and ducked into cover. Corgan blasted away after him but Lomax's return fire forced him back behind a rockrete column.

Casting around Corgan saw that the wounded man had run for it. The other two lay dead or dying in the street. He had to finish this before the runner had the chance to bring his buddies.

'Come on out, Lomax…' Corgan shouted. 'Drop your shooters and keep yours hands where I can see 'em.'

'Frak you!'

'Don't make me come in there and make you come out, Lomax, you wouldn't enjoy it…'

'I'd like to see you try.'

Corgan slung his primaries and took out the machine-pistols. Ducking out to the side he moved out of Lomax's field of fire and crept up to the corner of the alley-way. What he wouldn't have done for a couple of grenades right at that moment…

With his back against the wall he took three deep, calming breaths and prepared himself for a reckless, headlong dive into the alley.

Lomax cried out, spitting and swearing. His bolt pistols barked once and the sound of metal skidding across rockrete was swallowed by the sound of snarling. Corgan stepped cautiously into the alleyway, edging toward a metal canister Lomax had been hiding behind. The man was struggling under a grey-furred whirl-wind of snarling teeth and claws. The canid Corgan had tossed the meat to was laying into him with all its wiry ferocity.

Corgan stood back and laughed at the scene.

After a few minutes or pure entertainment he shot his pistol up into the air, sending the dog skittering away into the shadows. Lomax lay panting and bleeding on the floor, his pistols too far away for him to think about going for them, especially with a vengeful Escabar Corgan standing over him.

'Get up. Come with me!'

Lomax struggled to his feet, holding his arms up to indicate his surrender.

'Up against the column!' Corgan indicated a rockcrete upright supporting the portico outside the Crow's Foot. Lomax put his back to the pillar and Corgan moved up beside him, slinging one of the pistols and putting the nose of the other to the man's temple.

He took a pair of cuffs from his jacket and secured the man's arms around the back of the post before putting the other pistol away. After a quick pat-down he located Lomax's stash and relieved him of it. The wad of credits was big enough to cover Zane's losses and then some.

'Lucky for you, Lomax, I've decided not to kill you this time. I am, however, going to teach you a lesson I hope you never forget.'

Stowing his other pistol he drew his knife and quickly and efficiently slashed Lomax's clothes and webbing away. Any other valuables he found went into his own pockets. The rest he dumped in a smoulder canister-fire

'Stay off my turf, man. If I see you again, I won't be so nice…'

He went back into the alley to retrieve Lomax's shooters, ignoring the man's pleas. They'd fetch a few credits on the open market. As he turned to leave he spied the canid once more, watching his, tongue lolling from his bloodied muzzle.

Corgan smiled and tossed it another strip of meat.

'C'mere, mutt…'

He made his way back to the Greasy Spoon, shadowed all the way by a big, grey dog with a taste for dried rat-meat.

Luci told him, some days later, that Lomax had remained tied to the post for three days and nights before someone took pity on him and filed off the cuffs. The rest of his gang never came for him. Lomax was a broken man after that. The humiliation followed him around like a bad smell until finally he left the settlement and was never heard of again.

Reputation was everything down here. It didn't matter whether it was bad or good. Without it you were just another scab.


	4. Conspiracy

**Frag Hole Rock, Morning Cycle, three days to go!**

Bull Gunders was originally of Goliath stock. That is to say he was thick limbed and thick skulled. He was the kind of muscle that took well to life in the Adeptus Arbites, even if all he was capable of was looming behind a smaller, brighter officer. He certainly wasn't the sharpest weapon in the Adptus' arsenal, but intimidation was a valuable commodity. Eddisson Trall shook his head in exasperation as he tried to outline their mission.

'For frak, sake, Bull, we're just going in to scope out the territory. You don't need to say nothing so just keep your slack jaw trapped, okay?'

'Kay, Eddi, jaw's trapped. Who we arrestin?'

'No one, numb-nut, hence the plain-clothes. Did you bring your frakking brain with you, today or what?'

'Wha's brains got ta do wiv arrestin fings?'

'I swear, Bull, if you give us away I'm gonna frag you myself…'

'S'not nice to frag your friends, Eddi…'

'So don't give me a reason, right? I'd hate to have to tell you off again. You remember the last time don't you?'

Bull shuddered.

'You was real sparked that day, Eddi. I didn't like being punished…'

'No, well just you keep that fixed in your thick skull, right?'

Bull might have taken well to being in the Arbites, but he wasn't cut out for undercover work. Eddi was getting nervous about this gig already.

The Greasy Spoon was a cosy affair, though quite run-down and badly maintained. Still, it was the kind of place Eddi liked, the kind of place he didn't get much chance to frequent these days… now that he was _respectable_. He picked out a table and sat down. Bull's chair groaned beneath his prodigious weight, causing them to catch a few furtive glances from the other patrons.

The serving girl sauntered over.

'What can I getcha boys?'

Eddi favoured her with a smile and ignored the roll of her eyes as he looked her up and down. She was a looker, for a sink-level wench. Tough and a bit rough around the edges, just the way he liked it.

'Fungus beer for me, rats-milk for my friend.' Bull wasn't allowed to drink on duty anymore, not since he'd passed out on a stakeout and let the mark get away. The fact that Eddi was with a girl at the time was neither here nor there… responsibility was responsibility and Bull was Eddi's responsibility…

He wondered whether his reasoning would have made sense to anyone other than himself. He doubted it.

The girl moved away to get their order and he took a moment to admire the way she walked before gauging the room's other occupants.

He dismissed the barman out of hand and the trio of old-timers congregating near the window. Other than that the place was pretty dead. A young kid was stoking a boiler at the rear and a drunk had fallen asleep in one of the booths.

'Looks like early doors, yet,' he ruminated. 'But I think maybe I can think of a better way to pass the time…'

The girl came back and put their drinks down. Before she could take their creds he'd reached out and pulled her down onto his lap with a squeel. The old-timers looked around with a few querulous murmurs, but no one stood to come to her rescue.

They were a bunch of toothless old sots, nothing more.

'What do you think you're doing, rube?' the girl demanded.

Eddi squeezed her thigh and leered.

'Probing for information, is all,' he replied. 'C'mon, sugar-lips, you know you love it!'

She slapped him across the face and struggled to get up but Eddi had a lot of experience of holding onto unwilling parties. She wasn't going anywhere.

'Hold up, hold up, we just wanna ask a few questions…'

'I ain't tellin' you shit til you lemme go!'

'Just tell me who's running Frag Hole these days and I will, honey-cakes.'

She laughed, a harsh, angry bark that really got up Eddi's nose. Still, he was enjoying her squirming.

'These two fellas griping you, Lucile?' came a new voice from near the outer door. The tone was low and threatening, but Eddi was a veteran of the Arbites, it took more than that to frighten him.

Still, the newcomer had entered without a murmur of a sound and stood with a large-bore pistol aimed at the back of Bull's head. That was just about all that it took for Eddi's blood to run suddenly cold. He let go of the girl and she bolted away.

'Who the hell are you?' asked the shaven-headed youth with the shooting iron, a low growling rose from the huge mastiff standing at his side.

'I'm Bull!' said the big man, an inane and simple smile painted across his face. He was looking down at the dog as if he wanted to stroke it.

'Shut the frak up, you dink!' Eddi hissed. 'What did I tell you?'

The unidentified pistoleer cocked his iron, a loud ratcheting threat that made Eddi flinch.

'He's Bull,' the man smiled. 'Who the frag are you?'

Eddi didn't reply. His brain was working furiously at a way to get out of this with his skin whole. Bull's too, although that was slightly less important. But he couldn't think straight with that man smiling the way he was. If there was one thing that made Eddi mad it was other people laughing at him. It made him want to break something, preferably somebody else's bones.

'Stand up!' A second pistol rose to point at Eddi, this one a bulky plasma pistol. You didn't argue with one of those. Eddi got up.

'Move away from the table.' Eddi sidled into an open space. 'You wanna kick him in the ball's Luci?'

Eddi collapsed before he even saw her move. A knot of dull, brain-numbing pain working its way up into his abdomen. He hadn't even had time to react to the man's comment before the bitch put a boot in his crotch.

'That's not very nice,' Bull frowned. But he didn't exactly leap to Eddi's defence. In fact the guy just stood there looking dumber than ever. Then again, he did have a pistol virtually shoved up his left nostril. Even Bull wasn't _that_ stupid.

'What did you come down here for?' asked the shootist. 'Whose payroll you on?'

Was it that obvious that they weren't itinerants? All Eddi could do was groan. It seemed an eternity before he could reply.

'We're just scoping…'

'For who? Did Sott send you?'

'Nah… Arbites… we're Arbites…'

'Why didn't you say so?' the man grinned. 'I would never have caused you so much trouble if you'd been wearing your uniforms. Hell no, I'd have just put you in the ground before you even knew about it. Then again, I have been expecting you, so I guess I'll just ask what took you so long?'

'You were expecting us?' Eddi was just about recovering the ability to speak. He heaved himself up into a sitting position, eyeing the bitch warily as she stalked around to stand proprietarily beside the skinhead. The dog looked even bigger from his new point of view.

'Okay, so maybe I wasn't expecting a pair of dumb-ass amateurs like you, but I _was_ expecting _someone_.'

'What's this all about man?' Eddi was confused. They'd been sent to scope the local situation, find out who was running things around town. He was starting to think he'd been set up and that didn't sit well.

'You don't need to know the specifics,' Skinhead replied, keeping his pistol trained on Bull but slipping the plasma weapon back into its sling. 'All you need to do is deliver a package.'

He holstered the plasma pistol and reached into his jacket, bringing out a compact bundle that he tossed onto the floor in front of Eddi.

Trall struggled to his feet, scooping up the package as he did so. Bull held out a helping hand but he just slapped it away. He'd lost enough face already without having to be carried out. He glanced at the bundle, noting with some surprise that it was addressed to Senior Arbiter Hubris, the former watch commander in the locality.

'I'll pass on your message, but here's one for you… the next time I see you, you're dead meat,' Eddi sneered. 'And that goes for your pretty little girlfriend too!'

The navy pistol butted up cold against his left cheek. Eddi hadn't even seen the guy move.

'I could just let Bull deliver the message for me, if you're gonna be _difficult _about it…'

'Nah, nah, s'alright…'

The pistol slid back into it's holster on the shootist's hip.

'Get out of my sight!'

Eddi scrambled as fast as his aching stomach would allow out into the street. Bull followed at a sedate, nonchalant pace born of his complete lack of enough brains to realise the peril he was in.

The sound of laughter followed them and that was what pissed Eddi Trall off the most!

They'd catch some hell when he came back tomorrow with the boys.

xxx

'You might wanna skip town for a while,' Corgan muttered, running a hand over his weary features.

Luci propped herself up on her elbows beside him, doing that thing that enhanced her cleavage and made him all hot under the collar… when he was wearing a collar, that is. At that particular moment they were sharing a period of private intimacy in Luci's room above the bar.

'You think things are gonna get that hot?'

'I just wouldn't want anything to happen to you, is all. There're things going down that could spell trouble for anyone involved with me.'

She smiled winningly, her little eyes crinkling up.

'Such concern from the Iceman himself? It's unheard of.' She crawled up to lie across his lap, one arm around his shoulders, the other caressing the tights curls on his chest. Her breath was sweet upon his cheek as she said; 'Or is it just that I'm ruining your hard-knock image?'

Corgan grinned, putting his arms around her. That was one of the things that attracted him to her. She was totally undaunted by the cold-hard-killer reality that was his life. She stood up to him when violent men st their pants and she did it in a way that amused him. He supposed that kept him human.

She was also intelligent. She'd cut right to the core of his argument. Luci was the only person that was allowed to see the man behind the rep. All his previous squeezes had been kept at arm's length, distanced from the sensitive core encased within.

They'd been distanced from the violence of his business too, in a way that was becoming increasingly difficult with Little Luci Low-Brow. She claimed to be able to look after herself and Corgan supposed that it was another part of the attraction he felt towards her. She was a hive-minx, street-wise and barb-tongued. But even she could be taken by surprise. That Arbite had held onto her with barely a struggle. At the end of the day, she was still Little Luci – any determined hard-knock could bundle her into a sack if he wanted to.

She was Corgan's only acknowledged weakness. If that sounded selfish, he reassured himself with the fact that it was only because he cared for her in the first place that he was vulnerable at all. In his experience, most human actions had at least some selfish motivation behind them. This one was no different to any other.

'You know the crack, Lucile. The bigger a guy's rep becomes the more people there are waiting in the wings to bring him back down…'

In a sudden epiphany he realised what he was saying and it cut him deeper than he'd thought it would. Luci seemed to sense it too. Her smile faded and her skin felt colder to the touch.

'You're sending me away aren't you?'

He tried to sound cold. He was more open with Luci than with anyone else, but he was still a man. He was still a hard, violent man who hated to show any kind of weakness.

'It's for your own safety. They'll only try to use you against me if you stick around.'

'You mean if I'm still on your plate.' She moved away from him, sitting with her long, white-skinned back toward him.

'That's not what I said.'

'Doesn't matter. You're sending me away because you think you'll have to protect me. You don't think I can look after myself after what happened today.'

He said nothing. He supposed it was tantamount to agreeing with her but he couldn't think of a decent counter-argument.

'It's not just about today is it?' She continued when he didn't reply. 'Even after this trouble dies down, you'll never be able to sit still while I'm this close to you. I'll always be the chink in your armour.'

'C'mon, Luci…' he was getting exasperated. The emotions churning around inside him were completely alien to him. He couldn't clear his head.

'Don't worry about it.' She succeeded in sounding cold far better than he had. She rose from the bed, wrapping a sheet around her and sweeping up her gear. 'See you around,' she said, as she left the room and Corgan's life. Probably forever.

**Adeptus Arbites 52nd Precinct, Hive City, later that same day…**

'Come!'

The bulkhead door hissed open to admit the bulky, armoured form of Chastener Grauss Brydon. In his heavily scarred working armour he was a forbidding presence in the small office. The sigil of the Adeptus Arbites decorated his left breast, polished to a high sheen. He carried a small package under one arm and gripped his visored helm in his other hand.

Senior Arbiter Hubris stood and straightened the jacket of his pristine uniform, a sense of foreboding chancing upon him at this uninvited visitiation.

'Well met, Chastener. I take it this is not a social call…'

Brydon smiled insolently in agreement.

'I've come to make a delivery, Arbiter. Some hive trash bastard who thinks the Arbites are his personal postal service gave this package to one of my lads. It's addressed to you and given that, I thought it best to bring it to you myself.'

Hubris sneered inwardly. He knew exactly why this pugnacious lackwit had taken it upon himself to bring the package personally, and it was nothing to do with Hubris' seniority. The man was ambitious. He was looking for a lever that might give him some power over the Arbiter that could advance his career if he was so inclined.

'Let's have it then.' Hubris replied, curtly. 'Take a seat outside, if you would. I'll have my secretary send you in if I have any further need of you.'

Anger flashed across Brydon's features, but he capitulated, tossing the bundle down on Hubris' desk as he went.

Hubris took up his silver-plated knife and broke the gaffer-tape seal. He spilled the contents out onto his desk. There were three items, a cloth slouch cap, a ruddy pin-badge and a scrawled note. He picked up the note first.

Heffers,

Here's your cap

I've got the feather

Wanna know more?

Fire in the hole.

He picked up the cap and held it up to the light. The weave was compact and yet the material was lighter than it appeared. He recognised the style, but knew that his assumption need not be correct. It looked like the regimental headgear of the Catachan regiments. Six years ago he had served alongside the Catachan Third as they co-ordinated the extermination of an outbreak of viral neurophagia. It was possible that this had been mislaid, though a living Catachan would never part with such a thing in trade. They were accounted precious because they were woven from some kind of local plant. It was a link to their homeworld.

He picked up the badge and all doubts were swept away. It was the regimental badge of the aforementioned Catachan Third. It was well cared for, not a spot of oxidisation, not a fleck of mud. It had been oiled recently with a loving hand.

Hubris felt the sense of foreboding tighten in his guts as the riddle began to make sense.

The reference to a feather in a cap reminded him of an ancient proverb used to denote an achievement of great merit. The physical evidence before him linked that possibility to the Catachan Third, though in what way he had no idea.

He turned to his cogitator unit and accessed the Adeptus intel-net it at the highest level available to him. He punched a few keywords into the search engine and waited as the machine gurgled and hissed, finally spitting out a ream of paper giving him a list of file-references ordered according to their file- date.

Scanning down the list he found the first report filed after his reassignment from the Low Dome Precinct, his brain working feverishly as he punched in the file-ident. The report alluded to a flurry of violent activity. Hubris did a word search to locate "Catachan" in the document and scanned the content. The reporting officer's addendum gave a list of circumstantial tidbits, rumours and conjecture in the main, obtained in the evidence-gathering process of the investigation. The reference to Catachan was from a small-time hood who claimed that he'd been set upon by men who fitted the description. The investigator had dismissed it.

Hubris brought up the second report, again finding nothing but circumstantial and inconclusive evidence. But the inference of the message was clear. Guard deserters had taken up residence in the relatively lawless Underhive. If Hubris could bring them into custody, the potential rewards would be great.

He examined a few more reports hunting for more conclusive evidence. He began to gather names and descriptions. Some of the men identified as Catachans had been brought in for questioning on numerous occasions, but none were ever forthcoming about their origins and investigators had never seen fit to pursue what was an otherwise unrelated issue. None of them had ever realised the potential glory to be gained from bringing in a gang of violent, criminal deserters from the Imperial Guard detachments that had helped put down to zombie plague.

Hubris sat back and steepled his fingers before him. He would have to be canny about this. Brydon would want in on it, and perhaps it would help to get the brute onside from the start. Luckily, Hubris fancied himself the political animal, intrigue was no alien concept to one who intended to climb the ladders of success.

He punched the intercom.

'Sacha, send the Chastener in, would you?'

Brydon stepped into the office once more. Hubris gestured towards a seat and Brydon sat, propping his helmet on his knee.

'This little matter could be good for both our careers, Grauss. But first, why don't you tell me what's going on down in the Low Domes, these days?'

'Of late we've had nothing out of the ordinary, the usual gang-related scuffles, nothing more. There was a bit of turbulence a couple of years back. Old Sott's enforcers got their sorry arses kicked out of a little settlement on the fringes, I think it's called Frag hole Rock. They've made a number of petitions to the precinct commander asking for an Arbites expedition to re-introduce martial law, but Guthries thought it a waste of resources. I believe they're gearing up to go it alone.'

'What could be so valuable that they'd risk such a venture, do you think?'

'Personally, I think it's an honour thing. The Guilds consider themselves the ruling class of the Underhive. They monopolise trade and resources wherever they can. They pay local gangs to take care of security for them. There's always a profit to be made, and they can't stand the idea of being denied what they see as their due. But it goes deeper than that too. They lose face if they can't look after their investments, other local gangs will lose respect, they'll start to question the Guilds' authority. They'll start to wonder how much richer they'd be if they threw off their masters and went independent. They can't afford for that to happen, so they'll do anything to regain what they've lost, no matter the outlay.'

Hubris nodded thoughtfully. None of this seemed pertinent to the matter at hand, but he liked to be able to see the big picture.

'Tell me, what do you know of rumours that there are Catachan deserters living in the Low Domes region.'

'It's common knowledge,' Brydon repled. 'They're quite a successful concern in the Low Domes. They control everything from Tower Head to Palltown and have good relations with Sott & Co. Old Sott hasn't the muscle to oust them from power but that doesn't mean he wouldn't make things difficult for them. They have some kind of trade agreement that keeps everyone happy.'

'Do they link into Sott's problems at all?'

'I think they're mutually exclusive. Old Jamma wouldn't bother his head about Frag Hole unless Sott could make it worth his while, so I don't think that'll happen.' Hubris recognised the name Brydon coined. It didn't ring any bells but it was likely a nick-name anyway.

'Where did this package come from?' Hubris gestured at the spilled contents of the bundle, Brydon eyed them with unseemly curiosity. Hubris could see the cogs whirring behind the man's pugnacious features. He was thinking hard, which meant he was hiding something.

'Please don't think to conceal anything from me, Brydon. Whatever this means, there will surely be a promotion in it for you, but only if you play me straight…'

The Chastener seemed to reach a decision.

'Two of my men were in a bar in Frag Hole Rock this morning. They got themselves into a scrape, which they lost, and it came out that they were lawmen. They only came back in one piece because the local hood wanted them to deliver this package.'

'What were they doing there? I presume they were on a surveillance mission if they were out of uniform.'

'Yes. Like I said, Sott & Co have made various submissions to the precinct commander for help…'

'Did he order these men were going to scope the situation?'

Brydon hesitated, again thinking furiously. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

'No. I sent them.'

'I understand. You wouldn't be the first man to see a shady opportunity. It's a good thing you came to speak with me before going any further down that road.'

The Chastener seemed relieved. Hubris knew that corruption was rife in the lower precincts. They were infected by the disease of criminality that they waded through each and every day. It was to be expected.

'The real question here is how did this man know that you boys would be passing through his territory.' Brydon's blank expression betrayed the fact that he hadn't even considered that. 'I put it to you that he knew Sott had approached you personally and assumed you would be undertake a reconnaissance foray before accepting. He was waiting for them and he was ready.'

Brydon nodded. Hubris' grasp of intrigue was greater than his. Hubris understood motivation and subterfuge. Information was the key to maintaining power. In order to get it you had to have a network of spies and informants. There weren't many people in the Underhive that were above selling such information. The man who was running Frag Hole Rock would want to know what was going on in neighbouring territories so he could be ready for any moves against him. And if he was clever, he would do what he could to plays his enemies off against each other.

'You are being paid to help the Guild regain Frag Hole Rock. It seems that the man you are preparing to move against has a particular grudge against the Catachans running Tower Head. He's sent me this information in the hopes that I will divert the resources of your precinct into an attempt to bring down his rivals. That would sap a lot of manpower and equipment, leaving Sott to go it alone. We have a conflict of interests, you and I,' Hubris concluded.

'So what do we do?'

'I want you to arrange a meeting for tomorrow with your contact in the Guild. Do it personally. I don't want our friend tipped off. I have a plan that should allow us to kill two hoods with one bullet.'

'Yes, sir,' Brydon replied with relish, his first display of the obeisance proper to his rank.

'Meanwhile, let this man think that his ploy has succeeded. Leave off your preparations and make it look like you've decided not to help the Guilders. Perhaps he will lower his guard a little. I will see you tomorrow.'

Brydon stood and saluted, dismissing himself with a purposeful step.

The following day Brydon brought one Guildsman Rake to meet Hubris at his apartment in the Publius District of Hive City. The look on Brydon's face told Hubris that something was wrong.

'What is it?' he demanded, irritation in his voice.

Brydon swallowed.

'It seems that my boys were a little ticked off by their treatment the other day. They went looking for a little payback…'

'And?'

'I lost four men. Bull Gunders, Eddison Trall, Pes Kellit and Fredo Cosch. He killed them all single-handedly and went intro hiding. The watch commander is conducting a full search of the area. I barely managed to get out of it to come here.'

Hubris struggled to retain his composure. Such idiocy was utterly beyond him. But perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps the murder of four Arbites even gave him just cause to come down heavily on the Low Domes region. But it was complicated by the fact that they would be expecting it. The whole region would be gearing up to resist martial law after this.

'We could have done without this, Brydon, but we can still turn this to our mutual advantage. Attend me in the solarium…'


	5. The Way of the Gun

**At the Garter Club Bordello, two days to go… **

Jimny came to find him. He was one of the few people that had known where Corgan was staying. It was a good thing the kid was street-smart.

'They took 'em all in, boss… Luci, Old Petra, even Dusty Piet…. I couldn't do anything so I came to find you…'

The kid was red in the face after running all the way to the Garter Club from the Greasy Spoon. He was too tired even to gawp at the ladies as he usually did. Flower wrapped him up in her busty embrace, cooing over his distress and somehow the red in his cheeks deepened a shade.

'Slow down, Jimny. Start from the beginning, what happened?'

'Arbites showed up this morning, boss. Came into town throwing their weight around… I slipped into the crawl-space when they came into the spoon. I heard everything. Said they were looking for a fugitive that shot up some cops on the edge of town last night. Luci told them to go to hell and that if it was the same cops that came sniffing around yesterday they had it coming to them. She's been in a foul temper since yesterday…

'Keep to the point,' Corgan chastened him, casting an irritable glance at Flower in response to her I-told-you-so pout.

'They arrested her on the spot. They took everyone that was in the Spoon and ransacked the place. They're scouring the settlement for the guy that killed those men.'

'You did the right thing coming to tell me, Jimny. Now do me a favour. Go round up Teli and Salvo. Tell them I'll meet them up at dog-leg creek in an hour.'

'Sure thing, boss.' Jimny darted out the door.

'You sure you can trust those creeps?' asked Jewel.

'I don't trust anyone but you, Jewel, surely you know that by now,' he smiled. 'When those lawmen come calling, tell them I was here. Tell them I talked about heading out to the dog-leg to hire some muscle.'

'But, you are... I don't get it…'

'Don't sweat it. I can run twenty Arbites ragged all day up in the badlands and I'll only have to do that if they take you seriously, which they won't. They'll send a couple of bravos, maybe a Castigator squad, but no more then that. I'll be back when the heat dies down.'

'Take it easy, sugar.'

* * *

Guildsman Rake sauntered into Frag Hole Rock like he owned the place. For all intents and purposes he did. His coterie of hard-knock scum surrounded him, walking with the easy grace of wild animals at home in their natural habitat.

Chastener Brydon had been assigned to follow up a lead that put their target out of town. He felt confident that Escabar Corgan had turned tail after last night's debacle. Rake was ready to make his move.

It seemed so out of character for Corgan to have made such a fundamental error as to murder Adeptus Arbites on his home turf. He supposed the man was human after all. The rumours would have you believe he was a daemon wearing flesh like a mantle. Hubris was worrying about nothing.

The Arbiter had worried that Corgan was more of a liability than the current situation suggested. Obviously the man had contacts within the Adeptus, which concerned Rake not at all, but he had tried to make out that while Corgan lived, Rake could never seat easy in Frag Hole. The Guildsman was prepared to accept that as a possibility, but he would not become complacent as he had before. Corgan wouldn't get a look in.

No, Rake got the impression that Hubris was after the bigger fish, and Corgan's hot-headed violence had deprived him of a valuable decoy. The ruse he had planned would only have been possible with Corgan sitting pretty in the middle of his web of influence. He was forced to set more complicated gambits in motion to get the Catachans to bite.

Rake was circumspect about what the future held for him. He had all but achieved his primary goal, but Hubris had offered him full control over Tower Head when the Catachans were brought down. He'd be well and truly back in with the big boys if he could offer that prize to Old Sott.

He lived in interesting times.

'Jendo. Carry a message for me.' He handed the kid a crypto-sealed datapad that he had used to record Jamma's distinctive vocal tones. Jendo would only be able to unlock the pad when he stood before the Punisher's leader and asked him to speak into the mic.

The boy ran back to his jet-bike and revved the engines, speeding off into the dusty wastelands between Frag Hole and Tower Head.

Things were about to become even more interesting, Rake mused as he headed for the Greasy Spoon. He didn't notice the furtive shadow of a young boy stealing back into the shadows across the street.

* * *

**Out in the badlands…**

Teli and Salvo waited, warming their hands at a blazing canister-fire. Dog-Leg Creek was a sludge-spill ravine deep in the barren slag-hills south of Frag Hole. They were close to the domes outer reaches. The concave expanse of pitted iron and skeletal adamantium stretched up into undefinable spaces above them. Ancient, long-disused structures marched down from this cyclopean wall in serried ranks of rust and decay, coming to an abrupt terminus less than a mile away and giving way to this open prairie land. No one but ratskins and scavvies lived out there. The rimward regions of the Low Domes were even more lawless than the settled regions hubward. But that was part of the reason that Frag Hole Rock was valuable to the Guild.

The ratskin tribes were said to guard treasure troves of priceless archeotech that was worth more than its weight in gold to the Imperium. Frag Hole was the last outpost of civilisation and a base of operations for prospective forays into the badlands. Without it the Guild was forced to take the longer, more dangerous route through the scavvie infested wastes that formed an invisible wall around the ratskin's tribal lands.

Teli and Salvo were nervous enough about being out here, without Corgan being over an hour late.

'Where is he?' Teli muttered, rubbing his tingling hands together as they warmed up. It was cold in this part of the hive, colder than its aridity suggested.

'I'll give him five more minutes, then I'm going,' Salvo replied, limbering his pistol in its holster.

They started at the sound of shale skittering down the slope above them, pulling their irons and zoning in on whatever had caused the disturbance. Seven heavily armed and armoured Arbites crested the rise, combat shotguns primed.

'What the…'

'This is the law, toss your weapons and lie face down with your hands behind your heads!' The loud-hailer cast echoes around the narrow gorge as it bellowed down at them. Teli and Salvo flung their pistols and removed their other weapons before diving to the ground obediently.

Two of the Arbites stayed put while the other five scrambled down the slope. The leader sent one man scouting out to either side to watch the slopes opposite, taking no chances on the possibility of an ambush. The other three approached the prone men, weapons trained.

'Cuff 'em,' the leader grunted. The others slung their shotguns and knelt, shoving armoured knee-caps into the small of each man's back while they reached for their cuffs.

The officer watching the left flank dropped to the ground with a sound like shattering glass. Blood gouted from his visor. The leader swore and shouted a warning, too late for the man watching the other flank, whose armour wasn't proof against the high powered las-round that passed through his collarbone and dissolved a section of his spine.

The Chastener bolted, looking for cover but finding none and reasoning that a moving target would be harder to hit.

'Get up there and find him!' he bellowed at the other two Arbites with him. Up on the slope behind him the rearguard were peppering the opposite slope with solid slugs. They hadn't marked up any targets as yet and it didn't seem to be causing the shooter any problems.

Another man dropped to the ground, his life blood pouring from rent armour, his shotgun still in its sling. The Chastener and his last remaining foot-soldier dived to the ground at the foot of the hostile slope, hoping that the shooter wouldn't be able to draw a bead on them.

Instead, the sniper targeted the rearguard, both of whom had realised their folly in standing in the open and dropped back behind the crest of the ridge. He winged one of them and shattered the top of the other's helmet, dissuading him from sticking his head above the horizon.

The Chastener keyed his vox.

'This is Chastener Brydon to HQ. Have come under hostile fire. Three men down. We are pinned and unable to deal with the offender. Request backup A.S.A.P! Repeat, send backup now!'

Brydon and his cohorts huddled on the ground, Teli and Salvo completely forgotten in the heat of the panic. Teli had a pair of electro-cuffs fastened to his left wrist, but his hands were still free. Salvo's assailant hadn't even got that far in restraining him.

Teli slid the shotgun from the dead Arbites' sling, careful not to make too much sound as he rolled and drew a bead on one of the survivors huddling a few metres away. After swiftly racking the slide he peppered them with buckshot which bounced harmlessly from their carapace armoured forms but gave them something else to worry about.

The Chastener stayed put but the other man stood to bring his shotgun around on this new threat. His head exploded as the sniper locked zoned in on this newly visible target. The Chastener swore as Teli selected solid-shot rounds and racked the slide again.

'Drop the piece, copper!' he cried, 'If you don't wanna be next on the fatalities list…'

Half an hour later an Adeptus Arbites task force crested the same rise as their compatriots and found the three survivors cuffed together in such a way as to make it impossible for them to disentangle themselves from each other. The story was recited for many years afterward in the Low Domes Precincts and never failed to evince laughter in those that heard it.

* * *

**One day to go…**

Corgan had got back to the Bordello later that day and spent the night there, briefing his erstwhile goons on what he was going to do next.

Teli and Salvo were locals. They hired themselves out as muscle throughout the Low Domes region, but they'd always known better than to play rough with Corgan. They'd seen what he'd done to Helmut Wulfenska back in the day. They accepted his rulership over Frag Hole Rock as something that had benefited their extended family, whose business in livestock was thriving now that they weren't contracted to the Sott & Co Guildhouse.

He'd only used them a couple of times himself, usually when it was prudent not to be seen stooping to the level of a lowly scummer. They did small-time, occasional jobs for him and in return he made sure they had a safe bolt-hole for when things turned bad. They had a vested interest in maintaining Corgan's autonomy and keeping the Guild out and as such, he trusted them to work alongside him in this. Normally he wouldn't have trusted them as far as he could spit.

He'd spent a few creds to make their night at the bordello a comfortable one and told them to be ready for anything the next day. Then he called for Jimny.

The kid had told him about the heavies holed up in the Greasy Spoon, confirming Corgan's suspicion that this was a concerted effort to re-install the Guild in Frag Hole Rock. He was resolved to deal with them hard and fast before the Arbites realised he'd slipped back into town. Once done, he'd broker a deal with the lawmen through his contacts at the precinct. Eventually they'd see reason, stubborn though they may be.

When morning had come he'd broken out the heavy guns. Jewel hefted the custom las-rifle he'd used the day before. It was a high-powered sniper variant machined in the factories of House Orlock for the Imperial Guard. He'd lifted it from a rogue hit-man that had tried to kill him a few months before, a man carrying a fistful of credits stamped with the Sott & Co charter-mark. The madam had used lasguns before and the weapon rested easily in her cradling arms.

Teli carried a hefty grenade launcher and had looped two bandoliers of grenades over his shoulders. He also exchanged his battered laspistol for a compact Korsch 50 machine pistol. Salvo grinned with unconcealed delight as he hefted the 20 calibre stubber he'd liberated from the Bordello's armoury.

Jimny gazed longingly at the weapons, desperate to join the men and Jewel in the fight. Corgan shook his head.

'But I wanna come with, boss! You're gonna need a few extra arms if you're heading back to the Spoon.'

Corgan weighed the risks. Jimny was just a kid. Then again, he was no younger than Corgan himself had been when he first ran away from the convent. He would feel bad if the kid bought it, but the sooner he started to toughen up the better he would fare in this cut-and-thrust world. He couldn't have had a better teacher in Corgan.

In the end Teli decided the issue by giving him his discarded laspistol and showing him how to use it.

The fledgling gang took to the streets armed to the teeth, with Maxi loping ahead of them. Their destination, the Greasy Spoon.

* * *

'You're sure there was no one else in there when they arrived?'

Jimny shook his head.

'Can't be sure, they got here before me. Good thing too else I'd have been trapped inside.'

'Well, it's tough for them if there was. Run back and tell Teli to put a couple of grenades through the door. Keep your head down and wait until I give the word. They'll be coming out shooting and I intend to take as many of 'em down as I can before I need you. Got it?'

'I'm like a sponge, boss…'

'Get moving.' Jimny sped off. Corgan turned to Maxi and shooed him off into the recesses of the run-down hab complex opposite the spoon. The canid wasn't stupid. He could sense the danger and knew his own strengths and weaknesses. He hadn't survived as long as he had in the Underhive by standing in the way of armed gunmen. No doubt Corgan would see him later, if he survived.

The whump-whump of Teli's grenade-launcher broke the silence. Both grenades dropped through the saloon doors of the Spoon and were followed by twin explosions. The windows and door exploded outward in smoke and flame, hurling two or three bodies into the street. Seconds later two more dazed shooters staggered out, coughing and bleeding, but still firing their weapons as they came.

Corgan met them in the street. His navy revolver took the first man's arm off while the other was immolated by the blue flames of his plasma pistol.

The orchestral tinkling of breaking glass gave Corgan enough warning to roll to one side as another shooter opened up from the Spoon's upstairs window, tearing up the hard-packed earth in a full-auto torrent of las.

The window collapsed outward. Jewel had spread the man's brains across the walls of the room and his corpse landed heavily in the street.

The man that had lost his arm rose with a roar of pain and rage. He was pumped so full of stims that even his debilitating injuries hadn't stopped him. Corgan took a glancing shot to his shoulder, tearing his jacket and drawing a line of blood across the outer tip of his collar bone. Unlucky for him, Corgan thought as two more hollow-tipped rounds exploded the man's lungs out the back of his rib-cage. Even then it took a long time for the man to drown in his own blood.

The fight wasn't done yet. Corgan leapt through the door into the Spoon's ravaged interior. Flames still licked at the ruins of several tables and the bar, but the damage was mostly concussive. The place was smashed and so were the six men that had been caught in the blast.

One of these had managed to prop himself up against the bar. He shot at Corgan with some kind of pistol but missed by a long mile, his head still spinning with the shock. Corgan blasted him in the face with his revolver. With two rounds left in that tumbler, he switched it over to the fresh one and quickly reloaded while he had the chance. He counted twelve men down, including those outside.

A furtive scuffing reached his ears, coming from the stairs. He holstered the plasma pistol and primed his revolver, gripping it two-handed and creeping towards the stairs on cat-like feet. He stopped to one side of the door and put his back to the wall. It was still warm from the fyceline blast-wash.

He kicked a ruined stool out across the doorway, flinching back as five panicked shots blew it to even smaller splinters.

If the guy was toting a six-shooter, and it sounded like he was, then he only had one shot left. The chances of him carrying a seven or even ten round weapon were high, but that was a risk Corgan was willing to take.

He moved out and round into the stairway, blasting away into the shadows with his pistol. A sixth shot rang out and he felt the bullet crease his left thigh, sending him staggering on the stairs. A flick of his wrist put the second tumbler into position and the rest of his load followed the first batch.

As the smoke cleared Corgan was relieved to find the bravo lying in bloodied rags. He slung his revolver and took out the Korsch 90's. At the top of the stairs he hesitated again, this time slipping a twist of burnished steel from his jacket pocket and using it to peek around the corner. He would have used it at the bottom of the stairwell except that it was useless in the dark. The corridor above had a window at the other end that made it more useful here.

He caught a glimpse of a boot pulling back into the second room down. There was at least one man still alive up here. The room at the end of the corridor was the one the shooter had fallen from, though he may have been replaced by now. He'd have to trust Jewel to cover that angle. That left one other mystery door.

He slipped a smoke canister from his belt, pulling the pin and rolling it down the corridor. He had a pair of infra-goggles around his neck which he pulled up into position over his eyes. The stairway turned green and the shadows inverted. A respirator came out of a pocket and went to cover his mouth and nose.

He waited for the canister to start belching acrid fumes and for the flurry of panic fire that tore up the wall in front of him. When the sound of coughing and spluttering finally reached him to confirm that they hadn't had time to fix their own respirators he emerged onto the landing, weapons held ready in from of him.

The first door was ajar and the room empty. The second door had swung back to reveal a man coughing his guts up on the floor. A salvo of autopistol slugs spread his guts in a more literal sense.

That left just one bright halo of light to indicate a living body within the room. The silhouette of a man with his hands held high.

'Please, don't shoot… I'm worth a hefty ransom to you if you only spare my life…'

'Keep your hands high,' Corgan replied, his voice muffled somewhat by the respirator unit. 'Step out onto the landing and head downstairs. I've got a gun aimed at your head and I'll shoot if you give me the slightest reason to.'

Outside, Corgan removed his head gear with one hand while Jewel and Jimny covered the survivor. He didn't look familiar, but there was an aristo cast to his features that marked him as a Guilder without question.

Teli and Salvo emerged from the buildings, their weapons held ready. Jewel stayed in position, watching for any that had escaped their attention so far.

'That's Rake,' Teli elaborated. 'He used to run this town before you and Wulfi kicked the Enforcers out.'

'Well, he's about to go crawling back to his boss with his tail between his legs,' Corgan replied. 'He's got a message to deliver.'

The Guildsman wept with relief, such had been his terror at the thought of being executed. He sank down on hands and knees in the dirt, surrounded by the corpses of his bravos.

Corgan took out his slim-line pistol and casually shot Rake through the back of each hand in quick succession. The Guilder howled in shock and pain. Teli and Salvo stepped back at this show of callous cruelty.

'Stand him up,' said Corgan. The two reached down to haul Rake to his feet, which Corgan then shot through in the same manner, sending Rake tumbling back down to the ground, rolling around on his back. Two more rounds destroyed the man's kneecaps.

'That's just to make sure that his crawl is as comfortable as I want it to be,' he told the others, with the cold light of uncaring in his ice-chip eyes.'

If either of the men standing before him had ever had any illusions that Corgan was in any way human underneath the cold, hard exterior he displayed, then they were melted mercilessly away under that gaze.

He looked down at Jimny and the moment passed away.

'I need you to do something for me, kid. You're the only one that can come through for me. If you do it right, then Jewel and the girls will be safe and maybe even Luci and Petra will be able to come home. If you can't do it then everybody dies…'

'Name it, boss,' said the kid, the light of eternal loyalty shining from him. If Corgan had of told him to shoot himself through the head he wouldn't even have hesitated in doing so.

'You're not going to like it…'

'I'll do anything!' Jimny asserted.

Corgan took a deep breath. He'd set things in motion now that he doubted could be brought to any kind of satisfactory conclusion while he was still around. Frag Hole had had a good run, but it was coming to an end.

'I need you to wait here until the Arbites come back into town. I need you to tell them I did this. And I need you to tell them where I'm going.'

'But, boss…'

'It's the only way, Jimny. Luci's depending on you doing what I tell you to do. I can't break her out of the Precinct jail, not even if Teli and Salvo helped me, which they wouldn't. The only thing that'll let them off the hook is if the Arbites can lay their hands on me. I intend to give them what they want, but not before I've got what I want from them first. Do you understand?'

'No!'

Corgan sighed. The kid was crying now, head bowed, tears coursing down his cheeks, snot smearing the back of his sleeve.

'You don't have to understand. You just have to do it. Will you do it, Jimny?'

The kid nodded without looking up, utterly distraught that he was never going to see his hero again.

'I knew I could depend on you, Jimny. You've always been my number two!'

He turned to the others.

'I'm going after Jamma. He's behind this whole affair, I just know he is. He couldn't take me down head on and neither could the Guild. They've been gunning for me since I arrived in this Emperor-forsaken backwater. If I'm going down, they're coming with me. I'll understand if you don't want in on it.'

They looked hesitant. They hadn't signed up for this.

'Sorry, man, but stupid we ain't. No one goes toe-to-toe with Jamma if they value their hides.'

Corgan nodded.

'Then there's just one more job I need you to do.'

* * *

They dumped Rake on the ground some fifteen minutes crawling distance from the nearest Sott & Co Trading Post and melted into the surrounding terrain. They'd bandaged the man's debilitating wounds and told him where they were dropping him off. The Guildsman's survival instinct overcame the agony he must have experienced during that tortuous crawl from the brush outside the settlement of Fillipsvil.

The watchmen spotted him and sallied out to pick him up, recognising who it was that lay mutilated before the gates. They took him inside as Teli and Salvo made good their departure having fulfilled Corgan's last contract.


	6. The Final Word

**One day to go...**

Tower Head was a virtual fortress. The original settlement had been girded on all sides by a heavy pallisade with only two gates breaking the circle. It had burst at the seams as the settlement grew, but the wall still defensible. Butting up against the walls, inside and out, the town fathers had made sure that no building rose higher than the upper gantry level. The wall was patrolled day and night by the Punishers, who claimed virtual ownership of the town.

The two gates were no longer the only ways in or out. There were many entrances that had been cut into the pallisade. But all were guarded just as the walls were patrolled. There was a lot of traffic through the main gates in the morning and again in the evening before lock-down. Once that time passed, no one passed unchallenged.

Corgan got there too late to enter the township itself, arriving during the middle of the night cycle, but that suited him just fine. He found himself a hiding place on the roof of a sturdy shack. Maxi stalked off to hunt as he huddled down next to a decrepit water still, breaking out a packet of auto-burn bricks to keep him warm, shielding the small amount of light they made with his body so that the guards on the wall wouldn't have anything to be suspicious of.

It was a good spot, just right for what he planned.

* * *

Old man Sott shifted his gelatinous bulk on the suspensor chair, glaring balefully at Shrike Malfandri. The security chief of his own personal militia was not the kind of man to quail even under such malefic regard. The old man was just angry because his pet Rake had been abused.

'Take ten of the house guard,' he slurred, drunk as ever. 'I want this Corgan's head!'

'It shall be yours, Magnificat.'

Shrike Malfandri turned and stalked from the private chambers of the most powerful Guildsman in the Publius District, pulling his neuro-gauntlets onto silver-veined hands.

His housecarles were waiting for him without.

'I want ten of the best,' he growled. 'We hunt!'

* * *

Hubris couldn't help but smile. Corgan had played this beautifully and yet to his own detriment as well. The death-toll could never be forgiven. He was finished in the Underhive. Brydon would kill him just for the humiliation that had been wrought upon him, but now the lives of eight Adeptus Arbites could be laid at the feet of a man that was quickly becoming the most notorious criminal in the Hive. Word had already spread to the courts of the Lesser Houses and several missives had been sent to his office demanding that action be taken.

The episode with Guildsman Rake had played well and truly into Hubris' hands. He was now perfectly justified in dealing with the matter personally as Senior Arbiter. It was no longer a local matter. And where had this fiend fled to? Why, no other place than Tower Head, exactly the place in which an undisclosed number of Imperial Guard deserters were known to be sheltering. By tomorrow evening he would be the hero of the day, having brought down a whole host of dangerous and nefarious criminals and restoring a turbulent and lawless region to the fair-handed jurisdiction of the noble Trade Guilds.

It was almost too perfect.

Brydon arrived at last to give his report. The Watch Commander had assigned him as liason to the office of Senior Arbiter as soon as Hubris had announced his intention to prosecute the matter personally.

'The task force has been mobilised. A hundred men. Twelve armoured cars. We're ready to move as soon as you give the word.'

'We leave now. I want to be drawn up and parked outside Tower Head before the dawn cycle.'

* * *

**The day of moment...**

The false-light bathed the dome in gradually increasing increments. False sunlight cast by the archaic technologies, up in the fathomless heights of the ancient honeycomb bubble in which Tower Head languished, ignorant of the impossible scale of the city squatting above it like some primordial beast of metallic sloth.

Corgan crawled to the edge of the rooftop, looking down onto the hardpan where the Arbites had debouched from their armoured cars. There must be more than a hundred of the bastards down there. He picked out the commanding officers. He didn't even need to see Hubris among his subordinates to know that the man was there. He'd dropped this little opportunity in the man's lap and he knew Hubris wouldn't fail to capitalise on a move that could slingshot his career to stellar heights.

'They must have emptied three precincts for this little foray,' he murmured to himself. 'They might just have enough men to make it stick.'

* * *

Hubris raised the loud-hailer to his lips and keyed the power on.

'This is Senior Arbiter Hubris. The Provost-Marshal has declared a state of martial law in the settlement of Tower Head. You will open the gates and prepare for a full and thorough search of the settlement.'

A bulky silhouette rose to stand on the bridge between the gatehouse towers that had given the settlement its name.

'Sho ting, babalon, we got nottin to hide in 'ere. Roll dem wheel on over de tresh'old and we show you some real nice 'ospitalitay!'

As the man spoke through his own vox-horn, Corgan set him in his telescopic sights. It was Big Boy, the shortest of the off-worlders by more than a head, one of Jamma's right hand men and a heavy weapons expert without peer. He felt no trace of regret as he pulled the trigger.

The high powered las-round destroyed Big Boy's shoulder as he moved at the very last instant. Corgan cursed, but the shot had done the trick. The Punishers opened fire on the Arbites, unleashing all the fury of the most powerful gang in the Low Domes. The torrent of ballistics spattered from the black armoured hulls of the armoured cars but had little effect at such extreme range. The Arbites reacted with almost military precision, forming solid columns behind the armoured phalanx, bringing their battering-ram vehicles to the front as they charged the gate.

The heavy fusillade started to find armoured officers and a few scattered bodies fell by the wayside as the black-armoured wedge hit home. The gate to Tower Head was smashed aside and the Arbites were inside.

Corgan smirked. In the confusion he would easily be able to find a way to slip in unnoticed. He checked his chronometer, wondering when Old Sott's boys would join the party.

* * *

Malfandri flexed the Malcadon pattern auto-musculature of his exo-suit. Crossing the triple-blades his power claws before him he struck sparks just to watch them glow in his heat-sensitive visor. The town-scape of Tower Head was a multi-layered pattern of blue stitched with the orange, red and white heat signatures of the human offal that called this place home.

'Forward,' he hissed. 'The Arbites are already here. They must not get to the prize before we do. I will have the head of Escabar Corgan and no other.'

The Housecarles of Sott moved into the settlement via the rooftops. High overhead Yeld hunters soared on geo-thermals created by the mass of human and technological life below them. In the van of the force Jakara and Malcadon fighters leapt from strut to catwalk to rooftop, swinging from overhead cabling trunks and occasionally taking to the streets themselves.

The hunter castes of the Sott Household favoured the lighter exo-variants. There were no bulky Orrus pattern hunters in their ranks. They struck swiftly and silently from the shadows or the skies, whirling hurricanes of death.

They scoured the settlement, killing without recourse any that got in their way. Malfandri was spattered with gore long before the day cycle turned to dusk. But of satisfaction he did not partake, that day.

* * *

Nor did Hubris. Nor did anyone within the boundaries of Tower Head. The settlement became a war-zone for six whole days. It would be remembered as a bloodbath. Those civilians that survived moved as far away as they could manage and never returned. The Low Domes lived under the red pall of that day for decades afterwards, when the cause for the whole debacle had long been forgotten.

The Arbites forged out a field headquarters that they were forced to defend by the hour. The Punishers melted into the jumble of run-down structures within and without the pallisade, fighting the kind of guerilla war that they had been born to wage. Even the Sott Housecarles could not face up to the furious war-waging that Jamma and his Catachans undertook. The Spyrers were outclassed as they had never been outclassed before and losr several of their number in the first couple of days. But since the Punishers were not their primary concern Malfandri learned to avoid them, seeking, ever seeking for that rat-bastard son of a whore Escabar Corgan.

Malfandri was about to fling his net wider, believing that they had been set onto a wild goose chase, when he stumbled upon Corgan almost by accident on that sixth day.

* * *

Corgan had left Tower Head on the same day that the Arbites had arrived. He'd gone back to Frag Hole Rock and made some final arrangements before making his way back. He'd avoided Jimny, knowing that to give the boy fresh hope would likely be to break his spirit. He swore Flower to utter secrecy as he divided up his ill-gotten gains.

Most of it went into trust with Flower and her girls, but he put a hefty chunk aside and made Flower promise that she'd pass it on to Luci and Petra if they ever came back. He made Flower promise to look after Jimny and see that his education left nothing to be desired. The kid was the closest thing to kin Corgan had ever had, like his own little brother or something. It was mildly upsetting to have to lock Maxi in a closet while he left. Jimny would look after the mutt.

Flower cried real tears when he finally said goodbye. It was just as Corgan had always thought, the call-girl had fallen for him big time. He was only sorry that the feeling wasn't mutual. Flower was as hard-to-knock as any bounty hunter he'd ever encountered.

He arrived back in Tower Head just in time to meet Malfandri face to face.

The Spyrer lurched out of the shadows, clawing at Corgan with those lethal wrist-blades. Only his hair-sprung reactions saved him from smiling red, ear to ear. He had his navy revolver out and fired as the hunter moved across him. The armour slowed the rounds but at such short range even the advanced technologies of the Spyre couldn't stop the bullets from going through.

Malfandri stepped back into a fighting crouch, removing his mask and spitting blood. Stims made his eyes roll back as they flooded his system with adrenaline.

'So you're one of Old Sott's boy's, eh?'

Malfandri struck, faster than a snake. Corgan pumped three more bullets at him but impossibly they all missed. Then Malfandri was on him, bearing him back against the wall.

Corgan rammed his forehead into the bastard's nose, hearing the crunch of smashed sinuses. Still that iron grip threatened to cut of the blood supply to his arms as Malfandri brought his inhuman strength to bear.

With his hands rapidly going numb Corgan barely managed to switch tumblers and angle the pistol to rest against the Spyrer's lower abdomen. The trigger felt leaden in his faltering grip but finally it cycled. The slug burst through Malfandri, ripping through his innards to blow out the other side.

Malfandri let go, staggering back, trying to hold his entrails in. Corgan pulled his plasma pistol and fried the bastard. The Spyrer refused to die quietly, he flailed out into the street, a blue-blazing pyre of human flesh while Corgan dissolved into the ramshackle structures of Tower Head.

* * *

Corgan looked down on the square from his vantage point high on the Ecclesiarchy roof. The Emperor's house was run down. Buildings crowded up against it on three sides. Gantries ran overhead and trunk cabling festooned the upper scaffolding like ancient cobwebs. The roof was holed through in places and Corgan had had to pick his way gingerly toward the bell-tower where he hunkered down in the angle between tiles and wall.

He was impressed. The square was scattered with burnt out vehicles. It seemed that Jamma's first objective had been to make sure the Arbites had to damn-well walk wherever they went. The motor pool was a graveyard of smoking wrecks, scattered like a giant's discarded playthings across the breadth of the square.

The Cat's Head Tavern across the square was where Hubris had set up his headquarters. Arbites swarmed at the broken windows and in the enclosed courtyard. Outside, Corgan could seer the furtive forms of Jamma's men. They'd tired of running, it seemed. The tables had turned on Hubris.

As he watched, a white flag fluttered from one of the upper windows and cries of "parlay" could be heard even at this distance. The end game was at hand. Hubris was calling for a truce. A great cry of victory went up from the surrounding buildings and las-fire stitched the air as the Punishers celebrated their triumph.

Hubris was playing for time. Corgan knew that because he'd been monitoring the vox-traffic for the last half an hour. Reinforcements from precincts nineteen through twenty one were en route. They would be here within the hour. Corgan didn't have long to finish this game.

Turning, he picked his way back towards the rusted ironwork that would give him access to the upper reaches of the settlement's ancient industrial architecture.

* * *

Hubris straightened his rumpled and filthy jacket, summoning up as much of his pride as he could for the coming encounter.

With less than fifty men remaining under his command, this was turning into a disaster of epic proportions. He had to get out of here. He had to draw this gambit out for as long as he could while the reinforcements drew in to ensnare the wily Punishers even as they celebrated their false victory.

'Show them in,' he ordered. The trooper removed himself from the room to fetch the delegation. Hubris almost choked as he recognised the infamous Jamma himself. The gall of the man, the utter steely balls...'

'You ready to call it quits, babalon?' he drawled around the acrid stub of a cigar, lodged in the corner of his mouth.

'I'm ready to submit terms of my surrender,' Hubris replied. 'We came here looking for a man who isn't here. We were played false. This is all just an atrocious misunderstanding.'

'Tell dat to me boys, babalon. Big Boy, here,' he gestured at the heavily bandaged soldier at his side. The Catachan was missing an arm, the other having been amputated after a misplaced las-shot destroyed his shoulder when it should have popped his head like a ripe melon. 'He most upset 'bout what your boys did to him... most upset.'

'I will make reparations. The finest chirurgeons will be put at your disposal. I'll pay for the most advanced bionics a man can buy.'

'Very generous, Mr Babalon, but I think no. We no be gwan up-hive, no sooner'n you be staying down here wi' us, now.'

'What?'

'Here are my terms,' Jamma pulled a pistol. Hubris' bodyguards were disabused of their ability to protect him as Jamma's compatiots, one of them a cripple, took them down as quickly and efficiently as any Spyre Hunter.

Jamma smiled, just before the ceiling collapsed on his head and Corgan came tumbling through in a shower of debris and a haze of dust.

He rolled to his feet, plugging Big Boy with a Velossi round to the temple. The other Catachan went for him and missed as Corgan sidled out of reach, pumping him full of small-arms fire from his Korsch 90 machine pistol. The man he recognised as Burnt, heavily scarred by some prometheum mishap in a past life, shuddered and died in a bloody heap.

Hubris faced Corgan across the rubble and corpse-strewn floor and pissed his pants with terror. Corgan was white with plaster and spattered with blood and gore. He moved like a daemon, loomed like an entity of the immaterium, utterly out of place in the corporeal world.

'What kind of a greeting is that?' Corgan sneered in disgust.

Hubris just whimpered.

Corgan looked down at Jamma, collapsed under a chunk of the roof. Reaching down he dragged the big man out and propped him up against the wall. He was starting to come around as Corgan relieved him of his weapons and stepped back.

'I'll be with you in a second, Arbiter. I've got some unfinished business with this creep first,' he said.

'You little bastard,' Jamma spat.

Corgan smiled.

'That's all you've got?' he sneered. 'You're more of a lame duck than I thought, old man.'

'Go to hell!'

'I thought I'd give you the chance to appreciate the amount of shit you're in before I cap you,' Corgan continued. 'I knew the Guild was gunning for me, but I also know that it was you providing the muscle. So I gave the Arbites cause to get involved. Hubris here stands to gain a lot of kudos from bringing you and your boys in, and in exchange for my services, I'm gonna cut a deal with him to make sure I don't get the death sentence I deserve.'

Hubris nodded maniacally. He knew Corgan had him cold and one glance in those eyes convinced him that it was in his interests to play the man fair.

'None of that helps you, however,' Corgan mused, slipping the navy revolver from its sling and smiling. 'Your death sentence comes down from a higher court.'

'My boys will get you, babalon, sooner or later…'

Jamma's last words were punctuated by the bark of Corgan's large-calibre shooter. His brains decorated the wall behind him.

Corgan turned back to Hubris.

'So, let's cut that deal I mentioned!'

* * *

**Three months later at the High Court Publius...**

'Escabar Corgan, you will stand before the court to receive sentence.

'The charges against you are manifold.

'You are accused of seventeen counts of discharging firearms in a public thoroughfare; possession of unlicensed firearms; possession and distribution of banned substances; nine counts of fracas in a public place; twenty three counts of grievous and actual bodily harm; resisting arrest; withholding evidence in a public enquiry and uttering falsehood under oath.

'To the aforementioned you are hereby found guilty on all counts and sentenced to indefinite internment on the penal colony of Orrax.

'The charges laid against you relating to eight counts of murder are hereby stricken from the records due to a lack of binding evidence.

'Take him down!'


End file.
